Democratic presidential candidates broke with one another at their second presidential debate over the decriminalizing illegal border crossings and effectively instituting the kind of open border policy Donald Trump has warned about.

Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor began the discussion with the declaration, 'When I am president, illegally crossing the border will still be illegal.'

However, Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the far-left Democrats on stage on Tuesday night, asserted inside a CNN arena in Detroit: 'In my view, they are not criminals.'

It set off a debate among the ten Democrats on stage as to whether the country should allow anyone who makes the trek to the United States, regardless of whether they have a legitimate asylum claim, should be allowed to enter and remain in the wealthy nation permanently.

Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, a moderate candidate for the Oval Office, insisted that that illegal immigration must continue to be prohibited under the law.

'Right now if you want to come into this country, you need to at least ring the door bell,' he said. 'You don't decriminalize people just walking into the United States.'

Democratic presidential candidates openly broke with one another at the second presidential debate over decriminalizing illegal border crossings

'Right now if you want to come into this country, you need to at least ring the door bell,' he said. 'You don't decriminalize people just walking into the United States,' Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan argued in Detroit

Leading candidate and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren promised to get rid of the law that makes it a crime but split with Sanders over whether it is currently illegal to migrate to America without permission.

'So the problem is that, right now, the criminalization statute is what gives Donald Trump the ability to take children away from their parents. It's what gives him the ability to lock up people at our borders,' she said. 'We need to continue to have border security, and we can do that, but what we can't do is not live our values.'

She said: 'I've been down to the border. I have seen the mothers. I have seen the cages of babies. We must be a country that every day lives our values.'

Sanders then claimed,'If a mother and a child walk thousands of miles on a dangerous path, in my view, they are not criminals.'

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock rebutted: 'I think this is the part of the discussion that shows how often these debates are detached from people's lives. We've got 100,000 people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we'll have multiples of that. Don't take my word, that was President Obama's Homeland Security secretary that said that.'

He likewise told Warren, 'You are playing into Donald Trump's hands. The challenge isn't that it's a criminal offense across the border. The challenge is that Donald Trump is president and using this to rip families apart the same immigration system needs a same leader, and we can do that with that decriminalizing the health care for everyone.'

Warren told Bullock, 'What you're saying is ignore the law - and words matter and it matters. If we say that our law is that we will walk people up who come here, seeking refuge and seeking asylum, that is not a crime.'

She said the country must adopt a system that 'keeps us safe at the border but does not criminalize the mother fleeing' violence in her home country.

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Asked by a moderator if Sanders, who'd been asked the question first, would have illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. in search of free health care, Ryan said, 'Yes. Right now, if you want to come into the country you should at least ring the doorbell.

'We have asylum laws,' he said. 'It's shameful what is happening but Donald Trump is doing it and even if you decriminalize, which you should not do, you still have statutory authority and the president could use his authority to separate families.'

Buttigieg said at the argument's opening that 'we can argue over the finer points of which parts of this ought to be handled by civil law and which parts ought to be handled by criminal law,' but candidates should agree that family separation is cruel.

'It is a stain on the United States of America,' he said. 'Americans want comprehensive immigration reform. And frankly, we've been talking about the same framework for my entire adult lifetime, protections for DREAMers; making sure that -- that we have a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented; cleaning up lawful immigration.

He said, 'We know what to do. We know that border security can be part of that package and we can still be a nation of laws. The problem is we haven't had the will to get it done in Washington.

'And now we have a president who could fix it in a month, because there is that bipartisan agreement, but he needs it to be a crisis rather than an achievement. That will end on my watch.'

Trump has hinged his reelection campaign on the argument that Democrats are for 'open borders' and would be a magnet for criminal immigrants and gang members.

So would democratic socialist Sanders' free health care program, his campaign argued in a new ad that it released just before the debate.

It featured Democratic candidates, including Sanders, raising their hands at the first debate, in June in Miami, to indicate they'd provide free healthcare to undocumented immigrants - a proposal the Republican president and his supporters have said is unfeasible.

Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale immediately fired back with accusation in a tweet that Democrats on the debate stage who said they believe that the act of entering America without papers should not be a crime want open borders and crime.

'First hour of debates: No more private insurance. Big government socialism. Open borders,' he charged.